Hey I've been using AE for a while now, but only to do really simple things like take my targa sequences from Maya and make them into .avi files.

My question is this: I see a lot of online demo reels at 320 by 240 and some at 640 by 480, and they all have excellent quality and are sometimes as long as 10 minutes, and yet the file size is so small! How can I make an avi or quicktime be good quality and yet keep it so small??

Second question: If I import a targa sequence, can I cut it in half? Like split my one sequence into two separate clips?

Like I said.. I'm new to most of the aspects of AE, any responses at all would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

-Tom N.

LarsSon

03-12-2003, 06:50 AM

There are several compression codecs able to do really hard compressions. Not included in with basic AE. Anyway, if you have been watching those tutorials, there is allways one similarity. There is very little movements on the video. So even if you are using like divx, you are getting very nice results. Keypoint is to have enough (stable) videofootage. Not much to compress.

Splitting clip is very easy. Go to edit ->split layer. It will split active layer at the current time. After that you have 2 seperate layers.

Helping?

Tom N.

03-12-2003, 06:51 PM

Hey thanks for the reply.. so you're saying that in order to get a good hard compression, I can't do it with the compressions that come with AE? I have AE 5.5, do I need to download or buy a plugin or something? And also I know what you mean about how online tutorials dont have much movement, but I meant other online videos like people animated shorts or demo reels that pretty much play in real time or what looks to be real time.

-Tom N.

LarsSon

03-12-2003, 07:17 PM

Ok. If you ask how the hell do those starwars trailers look so nice and clear. And even the physical size is just 5 megs. Well don't know. But when i'm compressing our companies showreels and stuff, i use discreets cleaner and quicktime pro. It gives you very nice results. Easy to use and allmost as good as those "Real Trailers".

Haven't been using after so much after 4.1. Changed to Combustion...

Tom N.

03-12-2003, 07:31 PM

Well i didn't really mean star wars trailers, of course ILM has something better than AE.. But thanks, I've got quicktime pro so I'll give that a try. I've had the chance to use combustion once but dont really know much about it as of right now. Anyways thanks a lot for the responses!

-Tom N.

dg

03-15-2003, 08:04 AM

For the spliting thing you can use some shortcuts I'll give which one I use but since my keybord have another layout probably they won't work with you, but you can search for shortcuts in the help file

They are Alt+[ for triming the out point, and Alt+´ for triming the in point of the layer, you can also click and hold that grey corners and drag this will also trim your clip.

About the compression there are many factors involved mostly the size of the master, bigger better, so if you want to encode something first create a master with at least a broadcast size if possible at full uncompressed resolution and then send him to a external encoding application like

There are many choices avaliable, do a search some are free other costs some buck, you must find one that best fit your needs.

You can also check the Digital Fact Book from quantel, there you find some cool info about encoding and general video

http://www.quantel.com/domisphere/infopool.nsf/html/DFB

I hope that helps,
See ya!:cool:

Tom N.

03-15-2003, 05:45 PM

thanks! i'll check those out

dg

03-17-2003, 09:49 AM

You welcome man! :beer:

erwin1978

03-18-2003, 03:20 AM

I don't use AE so I don't know if it's capable of handling external codecs like divx. If it can't then I suggest you render your avi in high quality and then just recompress to divx using some other video editing software like Flaskmpeg.

ChandlerL

04-07-2003, 03:48 PM

In regards to the StarWars trailers and their quality vs. their size. LucasFilm's ILM used an advanced codec from Sorenson called Squeeze. It's extremely efficient. Unfortunately, it's $450-- but you can try a 30 day demo.

http://www.sorenson.com

AWB1989

05-03-2003, 07:49 PM

Woah.

Sorenson Squeeze used to be $300, I believe. Anyway, on sorenson.com it appears that there's a $50 rebate of some sort.....

CGTalk Moderation

01-14-2006, 03:00 PM

This thread has been automatically closed as it remained inactive for 12 months. If you wish to continue the discussion, please create a new thread in the appropriate forum.